


Shedding Leaves

by MikoGalatea



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Spoilers, mentions of coming war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23860297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MikoGalatea/pseuds/MikoGalatea
Summary: While watching the leaves fall in autumn, Edelgard thinks of what she must do in a matter of mere months.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Shedding Leaves

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for monthlysupergo's February 2020 Themed Prompt Table challenge on Dreamwidth, using Table 3 - Seasons and the prompt "Autumn", with Fire Emblem: Three Houses as my claimed fandom.

It was hard for Edelgard to believe that half a year had already passed since she'd first enrolled at the Officers Academy. All that time was gone, and now so little of it remained; watching the red and yellow leaves falling off the trees in the courtyard was serving to remind her of that now.

_The trees are shedding their leaves to brace themselves for the coming winter,_ she thought idly as she took in the beautiful autumn scenery around her. _It's not entirely unlike what I will have to do in a mere handful of moons._

Thinking of it in those terms made the stark reality of what she had to do starker still. In a matter of months, she would ascend the Imperial throne to become the next ruler of Adrestia, and from then there would be no turning back from the path she had chosen. It was a path that would lead to a better world -- a world truly for humanity, where power would be given to those who were willing and capable instead of being monopolised by nobles and others who had no qualms about abusing it, and where no one else ever had to be needlessly sacrificed like her siblings.

Even so, it was also a path that would be soaked in blood; Hubert had said as much not so long ago, even, and it was not as though she needed reminding. To walk the path towards the world she wanted to create, she was prepared to go to war against the Church of Seiros -- not play-pretend at war like the Battle of the Eagle and Lion that her class had so recently won, but true war where lives would be lost and rivers of blood and tears would be shed.

_I have to become the mask I wear as the Flame Emperor. I must become someone who can shed neither blood nor tears._

After all she had already been through, hardening her heart did not seem to Edelgard as if would be something especially difficult to do in theory -- yet she knew in that very same heart that, in practice, it was also not an especially easy thing to do. Not when her year here at the Academy, still not yet over, was also her last chance to be a regular person. Not when she was surrounded by classmates whom, despite herself and their own eccentricities, she had become increasingly attached to in her own way. Especially not when her teacher was the first person since Hubert she felt she could trust, and when her teacher was the first person outside her family that she felt she could be herself around.

_What would they all think, if they knew what I was going to do?_ She'd already resolved to walk her path alone if she had to, with only Hubert at her side as the one true ally she had against the countless enemies from the Church before her and the slithering monsters at her back; still, the thought of her classmates turning their backs on her, as she knew they were more than likely to do, made something tighten in her chest.

The thought of her teacher walking away from her as well made that same something tighten in her chest even more. She couldn't deny the pain.

_It's not as easy for me to shed my leaves for the coming cold as it is for these trees,_ she realised, looking around herself once more; this, in turn, made her realise how few opportunities she had left to enjoy quietly watching natural scenery like this. _Even so, shed them I must._

She only wished she had more time before she had to start down her path in the winter -- or, at the very least, that she could shed her metaphorical leaves as slowly as she could in the time she did have, and perhaps try to hold on to at least one.


End file.
